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Thursday, March 27, 2008

Review: The About.com Guide to Quilting

Don’t be misled by the title. Janet Wickell’s The About.com Guide to Quilting: From Pattern to Patchwork--Creative Projects You Can Finish in Under a Week is more than book of projects. Only 6 of 15 chapters are devoted to specific projects.

The first 9 chapters are dedicated to quilting basics, covering fabric selection, block settings, sashing and borders, applique methods, rotary cutting methods, machine and hand piecing, foundation piecing and finishing the quilt. The projects in the last 6 chapters are:

  • Miniature Paisley Stars Quilt
  • String-Pieced Table Runner
  • Quick and Easy Rag Quilt
  • Rag-Edged Denim Purse
  • Basket Wall Hanging and Throw Pillow
  • Shades of the Past: A Vintage-Look Quilt (made with 9 patch and snowball blocks)

The book left me feeling it is too little about too much. At 288 pages, including 8 glossy color pages of the finished projects, it is much more text than many quilting books. It is impossible to cover such a wide variety of quilting topics in detail in a single volume.

The ratio of illustrations to text feels low for a quilting book. Most quilting books have many photos or illustrations and The About.com Guide to Quilting does not. In a few places, even after rereading, it seemed that an instruction was not quite correct. I’ve been unable to find any other reviews of this book to see if others feel the same. I searched the Internet for corrections to the book and did not find any.

The book has many web page addresses to find more information. It can be used as a guide to finding information on the about.com quilting website. It also has addresses for many other websites, all presented in the context of the topic being discussed. You can spend many hours browsing a fraction of the web pages mentioned in this book.

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